Ashes and Block twist pull in big audiences for Nine

The Nine Network had two of the top three rating programs on Sunday night with Nine getting the biggest share and Gem having another strong night thanks to the cricket.

The Block was by far the biggest show of the night, delivering a metro audience of 1.758m for Nine. Contestants on the show were surprised with a twist last night, just as they thought they had come to the end of their “renovation hell” they learned it would continue for another fortnight.

The tight finish on the final day of the first Ashes test was also a ratings draw, with 679,000 tuning in on Gem for the first session and 558,000 tuning in for the second during which England beat Australia by just 14 runs. The game also brought 457,00 and 314,000 viewers to Fox Sports 2.

Seven had several of the top-rated shows of the night with Seven News drawing 1.471m viewers, while A Place to Call Home, Sunday Night, Border Security and the Force Behind the Line all performed strongly.

Ten’s MasterChef drew an audience of 773,000 for the opening of fast food week, while Elementary had 647,000 viewers.

Nine had a close win over Seven with 21.3 per cent of the audience share over Seven’s 20.2 per cent, but the network was boosted by Gem’s ratings which secured 13.3 per cent of the audience share, over both Ten and ABC1.

Seven’s Weekend Sunrise had a clear lead in Sunday morning TV with 307,000 viewers over Nine’s 261,000 for Weekend Today.

Weekend Today is so forced. I watched the guys play frisbee the other day(Today not weekend today0 and it was so unnatural. Dicko and the guy who won the logie(cant even remember his name) could not throw a firsbee to save their lives.